design

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the healthcare world for obvious reasons, and have been immersing myself with knowledge from all angles. One of the more fascinating angles is the cross section of healthcare and design. Here’s a couple of my favourite findings:

It’s been a while since I’ve read a work of fiction and I was highly recommended this book by my Acumen Fund colleagues. I finished this book over the weekend and was so captured by the story, outraged on behalf of the protagonist, delighted by the intensity, and overall overwhelmed at how beautifully written this book was. It’s a story that takes place from Ethiopia to New York, about love, medicine and the intertwining of fate.

We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation

When you look at East Africa’s healthcare landscape, Rwanda stands out as a medical success. Health indicators have improved on all counts since the genocide, all primarily due to the success of a universal health insurance, where the poorest 25% of Rwandans get free medical care. One of my favourite things about the Rwandan healthcare landscape is a hospital, Butaro hospital that was designed by MASS Design Group The hospital has no hallways, so patients can’t gather in close spaces, and the air in the wards are changed more than 12 times per hour to prevent patients from being infected by other patients – particularly, with multi-drug-resistant TB.

I recently was in Tanzania attending and speaking at a mobile health conference organized by USAID and the MInistry of Health of Tanzania. The theme at hand was the increasing technology and mobile penetration that is changing the health landscape in Africa. There are over 500 mhealth projects deployed around the world with the majority of projects (over 30%) being in Africa. I really enjoyed this article by Fast Company on the increasing social nature that comes along with the increased technology presence in healthcare. Also worth reading is another article by Fast Company, on 5 steps to designing a better healthcare system.

Good design isn’t beautiful. Good design builds trust. As an investor, when I evaluate healthcare interventions, I look to see how the service accounts for factors that matter to a person’s dignity: they way they are being treated, training of healthcare staff and accessibility of information. This is especially important when dealing with the poor, who are used to being marginalized, and not receiving proper service. The article is more web-based trust, but relevant nevertheless, when thinking about how you interact with a patient. At the end of the day, when receiving medical news, everyone wants information that is “correct, complete and unbiased.”

Back in New York, I attended one of the best Creative Mornings sessions, a captivating talk delivered by Jonathan Harris on the storytelling. I’ve blogged before on deconstructing the power of storytelling, and if you’re looking to understand more about this, Jonathan Harris’ projects are absolutely remarkable. They have ranged from documenting an Eskimo whale hunt to capturing human emotion on the interwebs to interviewing Tibetans on happiness. Here’s his Creative Morning talk and my visual notes from that day:

So my notes couldn’t quite capture the tail bit of his talk (I basically ran out of space!), but essentially, he highlights key trends that he is observing in our evolving world of tech and storytelling:

1) Rise of Social Engineers: Never before has there been such a small subsection of society ( aka. software developers in tech startups who are having a big effect of millions of human through design of software.

2) Urges & Outcomes: All tech extends some preexisting urge. What is the urge within humans that needs to be enhanced?

3) The Ethics of Code: How can we regulate software? Could there be a self-directed ethnics from the creators of software? This ties in back to point 1 on the responsibilities of a social engineer, given their wide-spread influence.

4) Healers & Dealers: Startups are basically falling into two buckets: healers and dealers. Healers: marketplace companies that connect people. e.g. kickstarter. Dealers: Attention economies that take up your finite resource aka. time by convincing people to spend time on their product/sites. e.g. facebook.

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All in all, I was very struck after the end of his talk with this question(s): what kind of presence do you want to have in this world? Am I a healer or a dealer? As our world’s language continues to trend towards a technology-based one, how do we position ourselves to become creators once more, instead of just curators of information?

For now, I suppose I am satisfied with being a Healer in the investment world. The bigger picture of all of this, is wondering, as an investor, what trends in society do I want to help accelerate…

So, I’ve been in South East Asia for the past three weeks, namely Malaysia and Singapore. The trip has been long time coming as I haven’t been back to my home country in over five years, and boy – am I ever glad I did. I have never been so inspired, humbled and proud of my fellow countrymen for the incredible work that they are doing in South East Asia. If you have the privilege to be involved with their organizations or have a coffee with these remarkable individuals, I assure you that it will be time well spent. Also, given that today is Independence day in Malaysia, thought it would be timely to share a few of my discoveries with you.

This is a Malaysian organization for social enterprises and entrepreneurs with solutions to some of the most urgent social problems in Malaysia and globally. One of their more notable endeavors is ChangeWeekend, a 9-10 month program as a facilitative platform that would equip organizations with design thinking and developmental skills. Even more incredible is the driving force behind all of this is a wonderful lady, Ellynita Lamin, who has a heart of gold and is trailblazing her way in this part of the world. Don’t just take my word for it, check out what one of the local newspapers has to say about her work too!

Teach for Malaysia (TFM) enlists Malaysia’s most promising leaders to improve education in Malaysia. It models after Teach for America, where it is a two-year, fellowship program where fellows are placed in local schools. Besides the fellowship, the team has not only enlisted an incredible amount of support from private and the Ministry of Education, but clear strategy and vision in how fellows can transform Malaysia’s education system from inside out. Change is on the horizon. This initiative is particularly close to home for me as I went through the public education system in Malaysia (yes, just like the adorable kids in the video!) and to get a glimpse of what TFM is up to, check out the video below.

This is a community of people that is creating a weekend movement where they come together to build projects, create solutions and bring great ideas to life. So far, their weekends consist of Hack Weekend, Make Weekend and Change Weekend, and I’m sure it doesn’t stop there. The weekends are designed to kickstart innovation and new projects. If you ever are in Malaysia for a weekend that coincides with one of their workshops, definitely don’t hesitate to check it out!

This is a beautiful project combining design, history and preservation of culture. The project traces, maps and documents the development of graphic design in Malaysia to protect our visual history. Malaysia’s historical design influences are particularly fascinating as this is a meeting point and cultural crossing of the East and West – from ornate Islamic texts, to Chinese calligraphy and European engravings. As you browse the site, the graphics tell a wonderful story of Malaysia’s cultural transformation. I highly recommend you start here.

5) Other notable mentions:

SOLS 24/7: education program in Cambodia, Laos, East Timor, Malaysia and Thailand that has educated over 80,000 youth.

Gawad Kalinga: Building communities through tourism, social enterprise, disaster relief, reconstruction and development to end poverty.

How do you solve real world problems with a human-centered lens? How do create a product that is effective and beautiful? Where can you find a community of thinkers that have the skills and process to solve wicked problems? Where do you find an accessible avenue to learn design thinking that is pragmatic and affordable?

A few months ago, myself and a group of strategists and designers set out to solve this challenges and emerged with a really exciting concept:

The Design Gym, a community of skilled problem solvers through a workshop-driven design thinking curriculum. We partner with organizations to help them approach their problems in a new way by connecting their challenges with our community.

Our inaugural project is a weekend long intensive at the Brooklyn Brainery from July 27th – 29th, 2012. We’re kicking the weekend off on Friday night with beers, networking and an intro to design thinking. Saturday will be a deep dive into the design process, methods and best practices, and finishing off on Sunday with a hands on application of skills solving a real-world problem. Don’t worry if you don’t have a design or strategy background. We’re all here to learn, and see a problem from a different perspective. Sounds like you want to know more? Sign up here, spread the word (we’re on twitter too!) and bring a friend!

If you’re an organization/company/non-profit and are interested in partnering with us, please feel free to email me. I would love to chat with you. If you have any questions, please email me. If you would like to trade stories about the space or learn more about the project or even just to say hi, please email me. I think you get the picture! I will reply! Seriously.

Since coming to New York, I’ve developed a healthy habit of reading on the subway going to and fro from meetings. My Kindle has made it a lot easier to read in a packed subway car and my expanded networks have provided me a wealth of books to add to my reading list. After a conversation with a good friend who inspired a goal setting quest, I decided to embark on a One Book Per Week Project – where I would read a book a week as a personal self-development goal. It has been two months in, and I am pleased to share that reading is firmly back in life and can officially say that I have read all the books on my shelf. I’ve added some of the books that I read and loved to my Book List but more than that, I would love for my readings and discoveries to be shared in a more public way. Hence, going forward, I will be doing this in two ways:

1) Tumblr

I started a tumblr where I would post quotes and highlights from books that I am currently reading. Majority of my readings are now done on my Kindle and thanks to this awesome tool called: Findings.com, all the highlights from my Kindle readings will be shared to my tumblr. Quotes Galore aka. my personal quote bank and tracking of books that I am currently reading. Below is a snapshot of Findings.com. I definitely recommend that you check it out!

2) Moleskin Book Visualization

One of the skills that I have been working on is the Art of Visual Thinking. I am naturally a visual leaner, but the art of translating thought and complex ideas into pictures is a completely different thing. Hence, to help me along with this learning process, I decided to combine it with my One Book Per Week Project. I bought some brand new moleskins and will be summarizing up the books I am reading into one page in my moleskin. This not only enables pushes my ability to retain information, but also allows me to piece together the book in my own way.

I’ve been expanding my reading, watching and learning horizon to different type of projects and must say I’m becoming quite the creative/innovation junkie. It’s amazing what individuals can come up with and thought I’ll share some creative videos/projects that have crossed my path:

I love reading and am a hoarder of books and ideas. This brilliant UX project by IDEO links together discussions and debates along with the book’s content to enhance your reading experience. An interesting way to increase the popularity of digital books too. Full disclosure: I own a Kindle and it has single handedly changed my reading frequency and patterns.

2) Chemical Reactions

This one I found absolutely hilarious and what better way to make chemistry fun! Real life chemical reactions! I’m bookmarking this idea for the next “how to make complicated and boring things fun” project I work on. I definitely see a clever marketing/branding concept in this.

3) Speed Painting

I’ve began a tentative foray into the art world and came across this artist: Agnes Cecile and became captivated by her work. The video above was a collaboration with an Italian fashion designer. I used to spend alot of time in my childhood, painting using water colour and her work just reaffirms my need to get more in touch with my artistic side.

Sidenote: If you’re looking for creative inspiration, check out portfolios on Behance. It’s like crack.

Update (April 17, 2012): Guess what? I found more awesome resources to add to the list!

1) MapStory – A crowdsourced platform where the global community shares stories.

Mapstory allows anyone and everyone to create, share and collaborate on stories to improve our understanding of global dynamics, worldwide, over the course of history. The cool component about MapStory is the “Story Layer” feature, where you can layer on maps, data, etc. onto other stories or create a stories by combining several different layers.

This platform tackles a specific problem in America – the immigration system. It uses stories to bring in new voices into the immigration conversation. The platform is started by Jose Antonio Vargas, an award winning journalist who came out as an illegal immigrant. HIghly inspiring. In the stories section of the website, the public writes in, sharing their stories and opinion on the immigration debate. Definitely worth sending in your story too, and have your say about the DREAM Act.

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Given that I spent most of my time last week researching about storytelling, my (last) week’s discoveries are all storytelling related. Below is a small collection of tools, platforms, posts and resources centered around storytelling.

Out of my many start-up ideas, one of them that I loved the most was to have a storytelling platform where people could share fiction and non-fiction accounts of their lives. Then after sharing this idea over coffee with an interaction designer friend of mine, Tony Chu, he informed me of this seriously kick-ass platform called Cowbird. When I checked it out, it was almost exactly what I imagined for; using storytelling as a short short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Cowbird’s long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the commons. I promptly signed up for an account after checking this out. You should too.

This is a education and media organization targeted towards encouraging kids to write stories. Story Pirates encourages creativity by then bringing these stories to life – through plays, stand up and different forms of performances. They’re most famous for the Idea Storm Program – a writing workshop that is followed by a musical sketch comedy featuring stories by students and performed by professional artist. Super fun.

A really comprehensive resource for nonprofits to ending bad videos. This is put together by CauseVox and ListenIn Pictures, two great organizations that are in the nonprofit space and who were also on the Be Social Change Panel in my previous post. If you’re a nonprofit and looking to spread your message via video – this is a must read. Did I mention it’s free too?

So apparently storytelling is an actual consulting business, and Get Storied managed to do this. They have a great manifesto and offer advisory services & various storytelling program. Next week is their Reinvention Summit 2: An online conference for storytelling in the digital age. An intriguing concept that allows for scale and low operational costs. GetStoried.com also has a great list of storytelling books to check out here. A book that is not on the list or related to GetStoried.com that is on my personal to-read list is: Resonate: Visual stories that transform audiences.

It’s not secret that I love IDEO’s work and last week, the HCD Connect was launched, a platform where the public takes on the world’s challenges by sharing stories, questions and resources. I haven’t gotten around to playing with the platform yet but my immediate impression is that it is pretty similar-ish to OpenIDEO to solve global challenges using crowd intelligence. I’ll let you know my full thoughts once I’ve had the time to play around, but it’s definitely worth checking out.

6) And finally… a plethora of other storytelling resources/articles that was compiled by Rob Wu of CauseVox. Knock yourself out. (Tip: I would start with Blair Miller’s next phase of storytelling)